St. Luke Living Center
By SUE GUTSCH
St. Luke Living Center correspondent
April 13-19
Partly because one regular member of the living center baking group routinely likes to try new recipes (she's the one younger than 70), we tried a pineapple-nut drop cookie this week. "The rest of the story" is we added coconut to the last batch and not because we had some to get rid of. We believe butter-flavored shortening might have been a good idea also.
Two tables of players picked out "winning" cards and were ready when Pat Smith came Friday afternoon to call bingo. As Pat often does, she shared some trivia and helped pass around snacks and drinks.
"When the weather outside is frightful," you get some participants, a large kick ball, a colorful parachute, and have fun indoors as we did Saturday afternoon.
The Rev. Brett Huebner and several of his parishioners from Our Savior Lutheran Church were here Sunday afternoon to lead our service.
An excess of three hours' worth of pretty-up was reported going on Monday morning. That's an allotment of approximately six minutes per "customer" if everyone took advantage of the opportunity. The offer will be open again next week if someone was shorted!
We recently received a new supply of popping corn and immediately began getting rid of it by heating up our wonderful popper and sacking up the tasty popped treat to all comers.
During the afternoon, Nancy Methvin stopped in to visit and showed us a new beautiful wall hanging she'd made. Another always-busy friend, Gene Enos, brought with him his latest scrolling project in progress and explained the process.
Near the end of our fourth "Little House" book, the Ingalls family moved from the surveyor's house into an unfinished false-front building. With Ma's encouragement, Laura became the somewhat reluctant first teacher in booming DeSmet when she began schooling Carrie and two young neighbor girls. Tuesday morning we also "witnessed" Laura's first sighting of the Wilder brothers, Almanzo and Royal.
The view out our large dining room's windowed wall provided spring sightings as several residents awaited our afternoon activity. Promptly at 2:30, Evelyn Bredemeier of St. Luke Hospital Auxiliary was here with a delicious iced pineapple sheet cake and snack crackers. Soon Penny Marler joined the roomful and helped serve the refreshments and drinks.
Lydia Batt passed around a quilt block she'd just completed (one of six) and we used our "mental muscle" to calculate that she had embroidered 468 small flowers in shades of blue. We made no attempt to count the leaves.
Thursday morning we sang hymns with Shirley Bowers. Five residents, Irma, Mel, Amelia, Dean, and Mildred accompanied Khrista to the senior center for lunch and the program.
As soon as we returned we helped prepare for the afternoon dedicated to our volunteers. There is no way to adequately thank those who so freely contribute to the happiness, comfort, and success of our facility. Our small, but sincere gesture of appreciation was a come and go time of fellowship and food.
